High heels and higher ideals

Linda Fairstein, the woman who almost had to deal with Waco takes on Middle Eastern spies and the CIA instead, writes Daphne Guinness.

Ask Linda Fairstein about the racy banter ("fuck", "blow-job", come trippingly off her computer) in her new thriller The Kills and a laugh gurgles down the phone from New York. "I sit at my desk and channel the conversation to a former colleague. I conjure up his picture and talk to him."

What, literally out loud? "Yes, for rhythm and authenticity." And he replies? "Yes, I call up Joe, Frank or Mike, think of a situation and have the conversation. It's bizarre, but it works for me."

Much that's bizarre works for Fairstein. Rape, for instance. Never in her wackiest fantasies did she imagine she'd become head of New York's Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit, earning the tag "hell in high heels" for the zeal with which she dealt with sexual offenders. Nor did she imagine she'd be shortlisted as Bill Clinton's attorney-general, then be pipped by Janet Reno.

Just as well. Four weeks later, Reno approved the FBI's assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas: 76 sect members died."I sat in horror watching the television reports," Fairstein says. "Reno said, 'The buck stops here. I made this decision, I am responsible."'

How would she have handled that, Fairstein's lawyer husband Justin Feldman asked. "I'd have dissolved into tears," she told him. She wouldn't have, of course. Her blonde hair and Escada dressing belie the toughness that put so many rapists behind bars.

"Look, I would've loved the job and all the important legal things that went with it. It was a comedown from very high heights; I pouted the first three weeks. The consolation was my fiction career wouldn't have started as attorney-general." She was never, she insists, a lawyer who quit to write. At least, not until 30 years on the job, when at 54 she retired.

Now the kudos of shortlisted attorney-general candidate follows her ("I am there on Google"), and her thrillers are launched in style. Her husband invited 100 high-profile women to lunch for The Kills, and their pal Hillary Clinton (Bill wasn't asked) did the honours.

The friendship came via Vernon Jordan, the lawyer who helped Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal and threw him a birthday party. Fairstein gave Bill a golf cap. Bill became a fan.

The Kills, her sixth book, twists at every chapter ending. "I credit Justin with that. He read thriller writer David Baldacci and said, 'He does something wonderful, he ends each chapter with tension so you can't put it down.' By my fourth book I was doing it. It annoys people when they can't stop reading at night. So I am glad it works."

The book was Feldman's idea, too. Fairstein was wondering which world to enter next, when he shoved a New York Times article about the fabled Double Eagle, an old, $US20 gold coin, under her nose. "Read that," he said. "It's got Middle Eastern spies, it's got King Farouk, it's got the CIA."

Moreover, the opening paragraph said, "If Dashiell Hammett were alive today, he would write a thriller about this coin, it has such an interesting provenance." (And how: in 2002, Sotheby's auctioned the only valid Double Eagle coin in existence for $7.6 million.

So, thanks to hubby, The Kills was served on a plate. All Fairstein had to do was research coins, collecting, and Farouk's alleged murder; the legal side she already knew. The opening trial echoed one she tried in 1982. Ditto the rape case - "but I added the murder". And ditto the 82-year-old woman killed for her mink coat, except in reality the defence said, "Actuarially speaking, this woman only had six or eight years to live, so it didn't matter how she died."

Back to rape (it's hard to escape). In The Kills - a double entendre on police jargon for unnatural termination of life and The Kills waterways of New York - the defence struggles to dump women jurors, but, as Fairstein learnt, they are more likely to criticise their sex than men.

"If the offender is clean-cut, well-dressed and good looking, they say 'Gee, I can't believe he would need to rape someone', whereas men are never put off by physical appearance."

Assistant district attorney Alex Cooper is her alter ego, albeit younger, (36 to her 56) and, like other fictitious legal women, has a fridge stocked with food: smooth pate, mousse de canard. This smells fishy. Isn't she in danger of stereotyping her heroine? "Fair criticism. Sue Grafton's investigator eats potato chips or swills beer, but I am known as a sophisticated New York lawyer and some of Alex's personal traits are mine."

Except her fridge is bare - she doesn't cook - but she does sleep in nightshirts, takes long baths and collects rare books.

And she gives Feldman a cameo role which, unexpectedly, is not Jake the television journalist lover who's never there, but the prominent litigator passing by. Jake and Alex have one torrid(ish) love scene. "It's funny, Justin hates to read about her making love to somebody clearly not him. He says 'This is very hard for me,' and I say, 'It's not me, it's Alex, don't get confused, darling.' "

So who is the hot(ish) clinch for? Women readers? No, it's for the doubting Thomases who say Fairstein's job is weird - and what about her love life? Fabulous, she tells them, she's dated guys, had romances. "Alex is not like tougher women in other crime fiction; I want people to know she has a sex life."

But why persist with this myth of couples not understanding each other's jobs and breaking up? Feinstein has been married 17 years. She and Feldman understood, surely?

"Yes, but Alex is still 36 so I give her that freedom. She'll get the right guy one day." And the right house. "I didn't get mine in Martha's Vineyard until I married the man who had one. Alex isn't there yet."